London Assassin
by theroguemind
Summary: Sherlock has fallen, but he will rise as an eagle. Based on the idea that Sherlock becomes an Assassin (Post-Riechenbach)
1. The Fall

((Author's Note: Based on Assassin's Creed and the BBC Sherlock, both of which I do not own. Will focus mainly on Sherlock and his actions Post-Riechenbach, if he happened to become a Assassin.))

Standing at the edge of St. Bart's roof was like seeing a whole new London. Sherlock had been to plenty of skyscrapers and the London Eye, but the ledge gave a feeling was completely different. Deep inside his head was a map of every street name and every shop corner but this time every detail was exposed and open before him.

It felt strangely satisfying to perch there, just before falling.

Sherlock tossed the phone away. John was watching and he didn't have any more time to waste or the snipers could perceive the hesitation as a chance to take an easy shot. He kept his head level and stepped off just enough to reach the target on the wet sidewalk below.

* * *

Molly shined a light into his face.

"Sherlock." She held the pen light carefully in her gloved hands like a priceless glass vial. "Please wake up, Sherlock."

Sherlock examined her face as she checked his pupils. Her light colored lipstick was worn. The edges of her eyes were cluttered with small mascara clumps. She had adjusted her makeup within the last hour but only superficially. She had not thought to erase all the tear marks on her cheek. Given the amount of shine still visible on the brand of lip gloss she wore, he estimated a ten minute interval in the women's restroom for her touch ups and another six minutes milling about her desk getting the nerve to wake him up.

"Did Lestrade and John check me?" He was still in the body bag but he could feel an IV needle sitting on the inside of his elbow and an expert suture job across his face. There was swelling and the cheek bones on the right side of his face felt broken; but Molly had done her task well and woke him after the pain medication was working.

"Yes. They came in and – Sherlock, they were devastated." Molly's voice wavered as she clicked the penlight off and pulled the metal examining table out further into the room.

"That only further proves they fell for the ruse." He unzipped the rest of the bag and eased himself up, finding himself stiff after blacking out from blood loss. Molly moved the IV drip closer and looked like she was going to utter something under the lines of "You shouldn't be moving."

"I'm absolutely fine Molly. You are an excellent pathology assistant." He quipped.

"Really?" Her face moved like it was trying to smile but also conceal her blushing cheeks.

"Yes. The way you stitched the open wounds closed with competence proves you are used to suturing shut autopsy incisions. However the IV drip you set is too high for someone of my weight and the swollen skin and bruising around the catheter indicates it will not last another hour the way you put it in. Fortunately for the living population, you stick to the morgue."

"Oh. Right." She moved over to clipboard and busied herself with his death certificate. Her handwriting was more legible than the average doctor and had the kind flowing slant from the way her pen was moving across the paper.

"I'm going to need you to get me a baseball hat, a different coat, and some jeans." When he stood the dizziness was not severe. His coat had been half removed so he quickly shed the outwear and adjusted his shirt sleeve. There was still blood on the edges of the collar and in his hair that was annoying his senses. He needed to get into his mind palace to plot the fastest way to get track down the three snipers. They were three wisps of the spider web that needed to be cleaned up while he was still in London.

He blinked several times and focused on all the collected terabytes of information held in the palace's invisible walls. Hired help, paid in full after the job was done. He couldn't afford to get too close to Baker Street or the Yard where he could be noticed. He started planning a route that would guide him through the most likely spots the snipers could be headed and cross referenced it with the zones where he would be noticed by associates and the press who would undoubtably be swarming after his 'suicide'.

"I'll be back with...your clothes." Molly said as she noticed Sherlock had lapsed into his customary silence and moved to push open the morgue's doors. Instead of a smooth exit, Molly bumped the door into someone. She gave out a sudden gasp and a flood of apologies. Normally her twitter was easy to block out if need be, but Sherlock needed absolute focus. The men he needed to murder were undoubtably blending into the night.

"Molly! Get out!" He hissed.

"She's staying here till we're done talking little brother."


	2. Figures in the Hall

((Author's Note: Mycroft is of course part of the story. This is a short chapter to keep the suspense up. Again, based on Assassin's Creed and BBC Sherlock, which belong to their respective owners.))

"Mycroft, I'm busy."

"I don't give a damn how busy you are, you've caused a great deal of work for me." Mycroft's face was twisted in that particular infuriated expression he had retained since they were little kids. His grip on the black umbrella at his side was tightened so that his fleshy hands were white in the dim morgue light. "You're coming with me to Diogenes and sorting this out."

"I don't have time to waste with your government issues. Moriarity's dead and I have other people to attend to." Sherlock spotted Molly standing still at the door. "Molly, please get my clothes."

"Stay here Mrs. Hooper. Sherlock, the car is waiting. Don't make me drag you out there."

"Molly, leave." Sherlock commanded with a gesture to the door. She looked between the two Holmes brothers and fled out the swinging doors.

"Sherlock, we have to leave." Mycroft insisted. There was a register in his voice that Sherlock had not heard in a long time. Paranoia mixed with foreboding. Mycroft grabbed the discarded wool coat, rolled it up and placed it next to the plastic bag full of prescriptions Molly had set out on a nearby desk.

Sherlock knew his brother well; whatever was pushing his brother's emotions from their normal icy state would have to be alarmingly dangerous. The Iceman did not panic at the drop of the hat.

The elder Holmes also did not carry concealed things in his sleeves.

"What are you hiding?" Sherlock hated to be so direct but his brother's careful choice of overcoat was hiding whatever was placed against his right forearm. There was only a slight indication of its presence in the way the fabric bunched at the elbow.

"I'll explain when we are in the car."

"I didn't agree to coming, Mycroft."

"Sherlock, we are –" Mycroft started until there was a sound in the hallway that overtook whatever demand he had on his tongue. From the steady rhythm there was someone walking down the normally empty hallway.

A man dressed in ill-fitting hospital scrubs appeared through the panes of the morgue doors. Sherlock had already moved to the door, a cat moving forward to take his prey unawares. The man had no ID badge – a major and most inept mistake in his hastily acquired disguise. Sherlock was not surprised that Moriarity had another man wandering the halls of St. Barts.

He had slid the door open, fully intending to take the man from behind until a blur of black did the work for him. The man uttered a surprised grunt and fell forward onto the grey specked vinyl floor.

"Stay out of the way brother." The older Holmes said, standing by the morgue door with his hand on Sherlock's shoulder. Normally he would have dismissed Mycroft in some childish manner in order to work up the other man's nerves, but he was busy absorbing the scene before him.

The figure was wearing very dark clothing and a hood; Sherlock studied the material and the assailant, but it gave very little clues. It was clearly made and tailored by hand of a light polyester. The sleeves were detailed with scrolling patterns in satin ebony cotton thread which barely stood out from the soot black fabric. Other than the extensive embroidery trailing on the sleeves, there were no brand or ethnic markings to distinguish it further than from being a very unusual garment.

The man was effectively pinned to the floor but attempted to move anyway. The figure raised a hand and twisted their wrist. From the size of the pale hand and the slope of the shoulders, Sherlock realized it was a woman who had taken down Moriarity's henchmen with a leaping tackle. A small blade materialized with a click and slid into place just before the tip of the woman's index finger.

"Finish it." Mycroft ordered, and the woman jabbed the blade deep into the man's throat.

The woman stood up and moved away from the body. When she took her hood off, Sherlock was not surprised in the slightest that it was Mycroft's assistant.


	3. Lessons and Lectures

((Author's Note: Based off of Assassin's Creed and BBC Sherlock, none of which belong to me. Some attempt is made to summarize some Assassin's Creed concepts, which may be slightly wrong...))

Sherlock was not enjoying the car ride.

Athena or Anthea, Sherlock had not bothered to determine precisely, was sitting next to him. She had fallen complacently silent after loading her victim's body in trunk. She was focused on the phone before her, which she had pulled from a side pouch underneath the folds of her black cloak. Mycroft was staring him down from the opposite facing seats. Sherlock memorized the shape of his older brother's cufflinks. They were clearly sterling silver and stylistically shaped in a vague letter "A."

"I have, as I have always claimed, occupied a small space of the British government." Sherlock snorted. Mycroft ignored the gesture and continued.

"I also occupy a much larger place in what you could call a Brotherhood of sorts."

"Mycroft, I do not have time for this kind of fanciful talk." He had places to be, and riding around the dark of London was not how he intended to get anywhere. His mind was mapping the turns as the silent driver behind the black partition wove them around traffic but did not head towards a destination.

"It is not fanciful! It is something gravely important and Moriarity's death ensnares it a great deal." Mycroft assumed his most stern face but then quickly pecked at the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "I would have told you sooner but you've spent to much time pursuing your...detective inclinations."

The way he dragged out the syllables dripped with disapproval but Sherlock had learned from a very early age that his brother disapproved a wide variety of things, from exercise to dental appointments.

"What have you been keeping from me?"

"I don't expect you to know much of the history of the Templars, but I'm sure you have heard of Abstergo Industries?"

"Yes, a very large and branched company. Very questionable motives in the global market." The 'Templars' Mycroft mentioned sounded like something he had discarded away along with the knowledge of the solar system, but Sherlock was familiar with the modern company's ties to crime. As so often with large, flourishing corporations, there were men with power dealing with men with connections.

"They are affiliated, or should I say, were affiliated with Moriarity."

"Of course, he was capable of plucking many threads."

"He was more than just a consulting criminal, he had men under his command that were Abstergo or rather Templar men. My Brotherhood position pits me against Abstergo."

"Mycroft, you can stop the car. Drop me off at that corner and I can get on with cleaning up the loose ends of Moriarity's schemes." The street corner out the window was empty and framed by closed industrial buildings. Sherlock knew the address without a glance at the roadsigns.

"I can't let you do that yet."

"I don't care for your history lesson."

"Sherlock, it is not a matter of history. Our family, and many others has been dedicated to upholding order. The Templars seek destruction and control of men. I know this is not the same game you and Moriarity were playing but either way, Moriarity's Templar connections were powerful."

"So that is why you gave him everything." Sherlock practically hissed. "It was an exchange between two middle men." He had already traced his brother's betrayal to Moriarity's fixation on his personal destruction. If Mycroft was going to persist in lecturing him like their father used to, he was going to bring up vexing issues too.

"I had no choice."

"To give into a man like Moriarity?" In reality, Sherlock was not truly enraged about his brother's storytelling sessions with his nemesis. What stoked the fire was the fact that three very important people had been caught up in the process; Mycroft was as good a player as Sherlock and should have seen the danger. The breach of trust was a sudden case of shortsightedness that should have never occurred.

"It was you or the lives of hundreds of others. Caring is not an advantage." Mycroft leaned back in his seat but kept his hands in his umbrella. It went without saying that he had thought the proverbial bases were all covered. John Watson was there to look out for all the details that slipped though the sieve that was Sherlock's detective mind when applied to the ideas of being 'safe' and 'staying alive as long as possible.'

"I know the maxim."

"There are people working for me and under me that are integral to worldwide movements against Abstergo. If I was to supply Moriarity any other story than yours, I would have compromised the Brotherhood."

Sherlock did not answer and wished yet again the car would stop at darkened street corner. One could could say the Holmes brothers were similar in intelligence and passion for their fields, but they would have failed to reconcile the fact that the elder Holmes did many things for the sake of the job and duty, while Sherlock did things for the thrill of deduction.

"Sir, Davidson is reporting all the eagles are returning to their roosts." Mycroft's assistant spoke up though the thick silence that had rose like London fog between the members in the car.

"Alright, we'll do the same."

* * *

A quarter of an hour later, Sherlock had endured more lecturing than he had deemed reasonable, only to find himself on a large estate out in the rolling hills. Mycroft had explained the origins of the Brotherhood of Assassins and dropped some names like Altair and Ezio. There some scientifically advanced pieces of technology wrapped up with distorted reports of Greek-named entities and catastrophic natural disasters. Other portions of the lecture covered the various ancient traditions of the Brotherhood and its eternal struggle with the Templar. Most of it sounded preposterous and had it not come from his brother's own mouth, he might have decided it was what John would call a 'practical joke.'

Examining the grounds of the massive estate gave Sherlock a firmer idea of the reality of what Mycroft claimed to be a part of. The estate was sloped towards the mansion with two layers of security gates, gravel driveways, and security guards. There was a massive central building and smaller facilities spread along its sides to look like guest houses and entertaining spaces. Most of the decorations and stately styling of the grounds and buildings were to appear as lavish spending, but were truly concealing security cameras, guard posts, and steel reinforcements. The brick pattern encasing the manor screamed of the time and expense it took to renovate and fit the home with modern instruments. The codenamed 'roost' was funded and used by something more extensive than a simple history lesson. Sherlock estimated between seventy to a hundred men and women worked in and out of the place, and a number of youth were there for periods of time too.

"So this is what the taxes go to?" John was always complaining about taxes, more specifically the fact he had to pay taxes and sort out Sherlock's since he personally found them a waste of time.

"Welcome to the Estate." Mycroft said. "It's about twice as large as the home we grew up in and has a better assortment of rooms."

"Everything is rather simplistically named in the Brotherhood." Sherlock stated with narrowed eyes.

"Honestly I would have chosen something more winsome or interesting, but it was not my decision."

The assistant lead the way up the grey stone pebble driveway and through a system of security checks indoors. A small woman with curly hair and a gait that indicated a family history of military service came by and took Sherlock's pills and bloodied coat. While the outside of the building had seemed serene, the inside was a finely tuned system of cloaked figures dashing down the hallways and other more plainly dressed workers working with intelligence reports and filing information. Mycroft lead him down a smaller side hallway which snaked its way around the eastern edge of the main building.

"We've a large amount of information to go over before I can allow you to start working, but we can certainly finish it before tomorrow."

Sherlock snapped out of his busy deductions. "Mycroft, I have to leave tonight."

With a frown and a practiced scowl, Mycroft turned and refused Sherlock's statement. "Moriarity's death has already created ripples in the system. Assassins have already discovered a right-hand man has taken over the newly vacated position."

"Well what would you expect? A fruit basket and apology card?"

"This is a serious problem for all of us."

"This is a problem that I can take care of alone. And unaided!" Sherlock added.

"Let me gather the intelligence about who we are up against and then we'll send you out with some Assassins." Mycroft was bargaining, a rare maneuver Sherlock knew he did not intend to follow through on.

"Fine."

Mycroft took out a key from his breast pocket and opened a thick oak door. Sherlock breezed past him and entered the room to find it half lit and furnished with all sorts of antique instruments. On the left were various weapons like swords, crossbows, and guns. The opposing shelves held smaller weaponry, namely throwing knives, shuriken, and darts.

"Impressive isn't it?" Mycroft said with a slightly haughty air. "Welcome to the war room."

"Truly spectacular display of old weaponry that has nothing to do with my work, Mycroft."

In response Mycroft flicked a switch on one of the display cases, causing more lights to blink into existence and reveal more of the room. From a cursory glance, Sherlock could see the weapons lining the lighted shelves became progressively modern. Rudimentary hand cannons led to recognizable handguns as kits of apothecary poisons evolved into small thread-like needles capable of delivering discreet chemical compounds into the bloodstream.

Mycroft walked past him and towards a table with a cherry inlay of the Brotherhood's stylized letter A. Sherlock scanned the third wall of the room and processed its recessed altar. From Mycroft's earlier lesson, it looked like a white marble statue of Altair surrounded by several other prominent figures.

"I don't need a tour of the place Mycroft."

"We're going to sit down and sort everything out before tomorrow morning."

Sherlock let out a groan. For the seventh time, he considered one the several options he had conceived for leaving the Estate and escaping his brother's infuriating interest in 'helping' him. "Sitting down again?"

The elder Holmes ignored the gibe. He pulled a phone out of his pocket and read screen. "One of our informants has tracked down our wanted men. We've also picked up a new name for our next Moriarity, a particular fellow named Sebastian Moran. We'll send out three teams."

"You know as well as I do that it's not going to take three teams to finish this."

"I know having you out there by yourself, mucking about won't finish it either." Mycroft narrowed his eyes. "All the ground you'd have to cover, all the men you'd have to find, it would take a lifetime and it still wouldn't fix the mess you've made."

"A mess?" Sherlock thought briefly about Jim Moriarity's bloodied brains leaking out onto the gravel roof of St. Bart's.

There was victory in his fall.

Then he thought of John looking up at him from the sidewalk. There was emotional damage, but it was collateral for keeping everyone that mattered safe. But it wasn't a mess. He could fix it; he could solve the problem in the end, he always did.

He looked up and faced Mycroft with a cold gaze. "This isn't a mess. I'm not going to sit here and plan out every detail with you."

"Sherlock, just sit down and let me help you."

The demanding tone in his brother's voice set Sherlock off. This was the last delay. Now that he had a name, the world's only consulting detective had a case.

Producing a small needle from his pants pocket, Sherlock pricked his brother's hand.

"Goodbye Mycroft."


End file.
